Israel

Ben & Jerry’s Israel Not to Carry Flavor Promoted by Linda Sarsour

Ben & Jerry’s Israel, the licensee of the American ice cream company, issued a statement saying that it will not carry the brand’s new Pecan Resistance flavor, which is promoted by anti-Israel activist, Linda Sarsour, The Jerusalem Postreported Thursday.

Ben & Jerry’s announced the introduction of Pecan Resistance earlier this week, saying that proceeds from sales of the new flavor will support “groups creating a more just and equitable nation for us all.”

In a statement posted to its Facebook page, Ben & Jerry’s Israel said, “All of the products sold in Israel are made in a factory located in Beer Tuviya…. We buy our milk and cream only from Israeli producers. We have no connection to the decisions made by the global brand, and we don’t get involved in local or world politics.”

The Israeli company said that it had no intention of marketing the new flavor but clarified that it would “continue to work and act for the community and for Israeli society.”

Among the groups that will benefit from sales of Pecan Resistance is the Women’s March, three of whose co-chairs — Sarsour, Tamika Mallory and Carmen Perez — have ties to Louis Farrakhan, the anti-Semitic leader of the Nation of Islam.

Earlier this year, Mallory was disinvited from appearing at a forum in Australia, after she called the founding of the modern Jewish State of Israel as a “crime against humanity,” and attended a Farrakhan speech in February.

In September, Sarsour gave a speech in which she said that America Muslims should not “humanize” Zionists.

Sarsour supports the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign, known as BDS. She has also voiced her support for a one-state solution that would create a shared country for Jews and Palestinians — that is considered a formula for the end of a Jewish Israel. And in 2012, she tweeted “Nothing is creepier than Zionism” — the right of the Jewish people to have a homeland – equating it to racism.

“The whitewashing of Sarsour by liberal media outlets is quite extraordinary,” Julie Lenarz, Senior Fellow at The Israel Project, wrote last year in The Tower, especially given that “the picture that emerges is that of anything but a feminist and defender of free speech.”

“Linda Sarsour is not a feminist,” Lenarz wrote toward the end of her essay. “She supports a culture that is forcing millions of women into religious slavery. She is a false apostle selling her regressive views to a blinded liberal audience.”